


Keep Calm and Carry On

by lc2l



Category: Black Books
Genre: Alcohol, Christmas, Gen, Heist, Planning Adventures, not so cunning plans, snow in London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:04:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lc2l/pseuds/lc2l
Summary: There are three key components to a successful mission: A clear objective, skilled personnel and the perfect plan.The Black Books crew have at least one of these things.





	Keep Calm and Carry On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [l1ls3b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/l1ls3b/gifts).



> Thanks to Katie for first reading and [angelsaves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsaves/) for the beta.
> 
> Merry Yulemas!
> 
> Features canon-typical levels of alcohol abuse and survival of acts of idiocy that would kill a normal human.

**[09:00 24/12/2017]**

**The situation:** The team have woken on Christmas Eve to find a surprise snowfall has blanketed London. Trains have shut down, buses have stopped running, pavements have been almost, but not quite, covered. Given the lack of commuters and the upcoming holiday, the majority of local businesses have called it a year and shut up early.

Banking on an entire day of stocking up prior to the inevitable Christmas shut down, the team at Black Books find themselves facing a minimum shortfall of ninety alcohol units over the Christmas period.

The current supplies include a half bottle of The Good Wine (£4.99), a three-quarter bottle of The Regular Wine (£2), a bucket of paint thinner (£4.50) and a single crate of Wine Manny Was Hiding For a Special Occasion (Cumulative net value: £1).

The team has just over twelve hours to resupply before Christmas, and less than twenty-four hours before current supplies run so low that they begin to sober up.

 

**The team:**

Bernard Black, bookshop manager and Mastermind. Equipment: a small planning blackboard used primarily for disciplining the team, a sign reading ‘Crime Section’ that points down the street to a charity bookshop and a smell that can knock out a security guard at ten paces.

Manny Manford, bookshop assistant and one-time accountant. Specialist skills: number three in the primary school sackrace, almost qualified for high school spelling bee and once nearly met a celebrity that turned out to be a particularly shapely potato in a hat.

Fran Katzenjammer, human person who was in the shop at the time. Previously ran her own business, at one time worked in an office job and was once a birthing partner to a great friend who later described her as “flighty, drunk and unreliable.” Her current occupation is unknown, possibly kept secret for security reasons.

 

**The targets:**

The Flip and Kipper. A pub. Roughly 10 metres away.

The Corner shop. A shop, around the corner. Nearly 50 metres away.

Mrs Greggs who lives next door. Often seen to have gin. No longer speaks to any of the team following The Incident.

 

**Plan A**

**10:13 24/12/2017, 95 units remaining**

“Has the Flipnkipper always been triangular?” Manny asks, examining the blackboard through the body of his wine glass in case that helps.

“It’s upside down,” Fran says, spinning it around until it is showing a triangle balanced on its point, three stick figures of wildly varying heights and something that is either a well drawn sheep or a new species of mould preparing an attack.

Bernard snatches the board back. “It is a plan,” he proclaims. “And it is genius, because it is my plan. All you have to do is -” He squints at the scribbles for a long moment, then slams it down on the table and points instead. “That. And then that. And maybe this other thing, and then: Victory!”

“Victory!” Manny and Fran echo, slamming their glasses together and knocking them back.

Bernard hits both of them on the head with the board, then points it towards the door. “Onwards! To the pub!”

Fran is first to the door. She puts a single foot out and it skids half a foot forwards across the step. “Nope!” She turns right back inside with a whine. “Bernard, we can’t go out in this. There’s practically a blizzard going on out there. You must have more wine hidden  _ somewhere _ .”

Bernard leans past her to look out the doorway. A single solitary snowflake winds its way slowly down past his eyes. “She’s right, who knows what kind of creatures are lurking out there? There could be polar bears, or penguins, vicious creatures. Manny, you’ll have to go alone.” He clasps Manny solemnly on the shoulder. “All of our hopes rest on you now.”

“We can make it,” Manny says, turning to the small shelf marked Wilderness Survival and reaching for the book on climbing Everest. “We have everything we need right here.”

 

**Plan B**

**11:36 24/12/2017, 79 units remaining**

“Alright.” Manny claps his hands together to survey his collection, then turns to his subjects. “Bernard, I have knitted this hat out of spaghetti to protect your ears. Fran, I have skinned the mysterious creature that died in the corner so you can use it as a muff. The bookworm costume has been transformed into a stylish snowsuit through the careful application of scissors. Is everyone wearing their snowshoes?”

Bernard and Fran both lift their feet to show the classic encyclopedias duck taped onto their shoes.

“And has everyone picked their snow buddy?”

Bernard and Fran attempt to high five and squash the spaghetti hat in the process.

“Now remember for winter survival: always keep a line between yourself and the person in front. If one person falls, brace yourself against the nearest solid object to hold them up.”

Fran raises a hand. “How much snow is there outside again?”

“Almost an inch,” Manny shudders. “Remember, if you lose your way, follow the light of the cigarettes. If you’re attacked by a bear, use your Complete Works of Shakespeare to escape. Don’t scream for help, polar bears are notoriously put off by human voices. That and the Coca-Cola lorry.” He lifts a coil of knotted-together bedsheets. “Onwards! To the pub!”

They make it out of the doorway. Bernard and Fran make it carefully over the slightly icy step. Manny’s Encyclopedia Britannica slides across the surface, and his teammates bravely choose to let go of the rope and save themselves while he falls hard upon the ground. “Oww!”

“Oh, you’ll be alright,” Fran says, pulling her fur tighter around her hands. “Anyway, I’m too young to die.”

Across the road, the object of their quest is dark. Step by slow step, they make it off the pavement and onto the road where the snow has turned to treacherous slush that pools around their encyclopedias, making the pages soggy from A through to O and threatening to spread all the way up to their feet.

Bernard makes it first, the sight of a bottle of rum in the window giving him the burst of strength required to throw himself up onto the pavement on the far side and across the ice, grabbing hold of the handle and giving it a solid pull.

It doesn’t move. “Well, we tried,” he says, pushing it once for good measure, then reaching into his belt for an emergency vial, snapping the top off and swallowing the generous measure of paint thinner within.

Fran reaches him on the pavement. “Wait, was that your plan? Get here and hope it’s unlocked.”

Bernard fishes the emergency cigarette out of the bottom of the vial and points the soggy end at her. “Well I don’t see you coming up with anything better.”

Fran looks up at the building, down at the rum and cracks her knuckles.

 

**Plan C**

**13:03 24/12/2017, 78 units remaining**

“Well how was I supposed to know you two would be a terrible foundation for a human pyramid?”

 

**Plan D**

**13:57 24/12/2017, 76 units remaining**

Bernard swings the blackboard wildly, pausing between hits to gasp for breath. “This window -” Swing - “- will crack -” - swing - “- any moment -” - swing - “- now!”

With an almighty crash, the shattered pieces of the blackboard go flying in all directions. One shard lodges in Manny’s forehead, with the small chalk label ‘sale, 99p’. “Ahhh!” he cries. “Bernard! Fran! I’m a unicorn!”

“Nonsense!” Bernard gives the window a last careful look in case it has decided to spontaneously break of its own accord, then turns to Manny and pulls the shard of board free.

A tiny red fountain erupts from the hole. “Ahhhhh!” Manny repeats, louder. “No! Put it back, put it back!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Fran says, tugging off her scarf and reaching out to tie it around his head. She then leans past him to rap the window. It makes the knocking sound of a solid pane of glass with no intention of breaking any time soon. “Right then, there’s a beer garden round the back.”

“A beer… garden?” Manny asks, pushing the tasseled scarf end out of his eyes to frown at her.

“Yes, you know. For sitting in the sun, drinking outside. In summer.”

There is a short pause in which they all look at each other and consider the prospect of drinking outside in London at any time of year.

The laughter takes them through a solid twenty minutes.

 

**Plan F**

**14:34 24/12/2017, 70 units remaining**

The garden gate is tall and firm; it looks like it has stood for years against the worst London has to offer and will continue standing for years yet. Bernard shakes the wood experimentally; the bookshelves at the shop look solid to the casual observer, but at this point they’re largely held together by the sawdust and the woodworm, and the slightest touch will collapse even the hardiest down into dust.

This gate, it turns out, does not have that problem.

“If you two both hold your hands out like a human pyramid -”

“No,” Bernard and Manny say in unison. Bernard reaches into his pack for a bottle of thinking wine and drinks it, looking the wood up and down. There’s a huge gap at the top; possibly they could stack encyclopedias up there.

Fran bends down. “There’s a gap underneath.” She turns to size them up. “Someone skinny, flexible and expendable could easily squeeze through. Manny, you’re up.”

“What?” Manny looks up from rubbing at his bottom. “No! I’m injured! You both fell on top of me, it’s someone else’s turn!”

“We fell on top of you to squash you nice and flat,” Bernard says in the tones of one who has figured out how to make someone else do a job and isn’t going to back down now. “Purely so that you would be suitable for this plan.”

Manny took a step back down the alleyway. “You only just thought of this plan! Fran, you’re small! You can go!”

Fran reaches into her bag and pulls out the first thing she finds there, lifting it up so that the glass catches the light. “I’ll give you the last of the Good Wine.”

Manny freezes, eyes caught in the light. Bernard also hesitates, distracted by the glint of it. “How many units would you say you’d got there?” he asks.

Fran waves the bottle in front of Manny’s eyes once more, then rolls it under the wooden gate. “Fetch!”

 

**Plan F**

**14:47 24/12/2017, 69 units remaining**

“Pull me back!” Bernard hisses. “Pull me back!”

Fran grabs the back of his coat to yank him out from under the gate where he pushes himself into a hazy level of upright, brushes the dirt of the cobbles off his coat to reveal the dirt of life underneath and attempts to look dignified. Fran raises an eyebrow at him.

“How much wine was in that bottle?” he asks.

She considers for a moment. “Half a unit? Maybe a third.” Then knocks on the gate. “Manny, how’s it going in there?”

There’s a thud as though of a body hitting the gate on the other side. “There’s a dog,” Manny’s voice says, low and muffled. “It is roughly the size of a polar bear, and it is sleeping, so I will have to be cunning as a fox.”

Bernard bangs loudly on the gate. “Can you see a door?” he shouts. “Is there a way in?”

“Oh god,” Manny says. “It’s moving. Fran, Fran, you have to pull me back.”

Fran holds up a hand to stop Bernard from speaking. “Just a minute, can you see a door? Roll back the bottle of wine.”

There’s a vaguely strangled cry from the other side of the fence.

Fran lets out an exasperated sigh. “Look what you’ve done now. Now we’ll never get into the bar. I was going to do my best barman impression and everything, did you know I pulled pints in college?”

“You worked at a bar in college?”

“I don’t think I worked there.” She frowns; Manny’s yelp echoes behind them. “Maybe I did. I just remember pulling a lot of pints.” She looks up at the roof. “Plan G?”

 

**Plan G**

**16:26 24/12/2017, 66 units remaining**

“Well I’m not climbing drainpipes at my age,” Fran says.

Bernard lets out a very put-upon sigh. “Fine. Manny. Manny!”

In the silence, there’s a soft drawn-out squeak like the air being released very slowly from a balloon. “Oh right,” Bernard says. “That’s it then, you’ll have to go.” He reaches into his bag and pulls out the first bottle his hand reaches, tipping it back without looking.

“I can’t,” Fran whines. “It’s not ladylike, you know. I’m a woman, we’re delicate.” Her eyes narrow. “What are you drinking?”

His eyes are streaming, and there might be a hole burning in his throat. “Paint thinner, I think.” He examines the bottle, but it just swims back and forth in front of his eyes unhelpfully. He takes another swig.

“Thought so, give me some.” He tries to pull it away from her snatching hands, but ends up misjudging distance and the orientation of the universe and throwing it at her instead. “That’s foul,” she says, drinking half of it. “God, I feel -”

“Like acid is burning a hole in your stomach,” Bernard agrees, waving a hand in her direction. “Give it back.”

 

**Plan H**

**20:12 24/12/2017, 41 units remaining**

“We should call them!” Fran reaches for her pocket, then takes her hand out of her mouth and reaches into her sock, her collar, her bra twice before finally finding the inside of her coat and the phone hidden away inside.

“Why do you have a phobile - a tomile - a scolile -” Bernard isn’t sure any of them were right, but he tried enough times that one of them must have been close. “A fellytone. A shmelly - they’re not allowed in. In the shop! My shop, that I -” He squints into the mysterious blurred wilderness across the road where a few remaining brain cells spark that something important used to be.

“No, look.” Fran waves a hand at the pub window. “There’s a number, we can call them.” She examines the number carefully, then hits a collection of buttons on the handset.

Bernard hovers at her shoulder, partly out of interest and partly because if he tried to hold up his own weight he’d be lying in the gutter. “Well? Well? Well? Tell them we need it. Tell them we’re desperate.”

“Shush, it’s ringing.” She held it to her ear. “Hello? Hello, is that the pub what is opposite the bookshop?”

“Well?” Bernard says. “Well? Well?”

She tosses the phone to him. He catches it - at least, it lands in his hands, and then he stares down, confused about how it could possibly have got there. “I got the answer machine, it says they’re closed until boxing day - Boxing day!”

Bernard squints down at the device in his hands. There are two buttons available to him: Unlock, and Emergency Call.

 

**Plan I**

**20:16 24/12/2017, 40 units remaining**

“I’m sorry, sir, but this really doesn’t sound like an emergency situation, and if you remain on the line, I will have to report you for wasting police time.”

 

**Plan J**

**20:16 24/12/2017, 1/2 a unit (maybe 1/3)**

The rottweiler is winning, it is fairly clear to see. But Manny has regrouped at the water butt with the last of the Good Wine, and he has a plan. He swallows the wine, reaches into his emergency snow bag and withdraws a hefty tome of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. A hardback, illustrated copy. 884647 words. 2754 pages. Leather bound in thick cardboard, over a foot wide on each side. Manny withdraws it in two hands, raises it high and brings it down hard upon his lap.

“Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we - ow! Ow! Argh!”

 

**Plan L**

**22:37 24/12/2017, 30 units remaining**

To get to the corner shop, they each carry an atlas, a whistle and a copy of The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson. Bernard has a coat made from the leather bindings of a number of classic novels, and Fran is using a novelty Toblerone metre as a cane after the disastrous conclusion of Plan G. Bernard leaves a trail of cigarette butts somewhat unintentionally so they can remember the way they came.

There’s the distant sound of the telephone ringing, as though from another life. The only sign to indicate their direction of travel is a star hanging high in the sky, flashing on and off, over and over, an endless cycle of life and death. They walk slowly through the snow, one step in front of the other. Occasionally one cries out, and has to wait through the fraught moments for the other’s response. In those brief moments between human contact, they could truly be out here all alone in a harsh, cold world.

“Hey Bernard,” Fran says.

Bernard turns, squinting against the harsh glare of the streetlight to make out her face. “Fran? Are you still with me?”

“I think we might have taken a wrong turning.” She points behind them. Bernard lifts his gaze over her shoulder. Behind her there are a couple of houses, the bookshop and, slightly further down from there, the blue sign of the corner shop swinging lightly in the breeze.

Bernard frowns. “Then where are we headed?”

Fran squints past him. “That house with so many decorations it looks like Santa threw up on it.”

With hindsight, that might explain the star. “Do you think they have wine?”

 

**Plan M**

**23:55 24/12/2017, 24 units remaining**

The corner shop’s lights are off and the door is locked. “Manny!” Bernard shouts, shaking the door so hard the glass shakes in the frame.

There is a distant howl, as though from a bookkeeper's assistant trapped in a small garden with a large dog.

“Maybe they’ll open in the morning,” Fran squints through the window at the sign. It keeps blurring and jumping around, very inconsiderately. “C-l-o-s-e-d until after Xmas. What’s X mass? Is it now? Is it five minutes from now?”

Bernard frowns intently at the door, then cross references the sign to a randomly selected page from The Odyssey. “I think,” he says carefully. “I believe. That it is not.” He looks back at the door. “What plan are we on now?”

 

**Plan O**

**01:01 25/12/2017, 19 units remaining**

The gate has stood firm for five long years. It has held back foreign dogs, drunken locals and the occasional lost tourist, but it has made the fatal mistake of getting between Bernard Black and the potential for alcohol, and no gate was built to withstand such odds.

Bernard lets out a war cry that sounds remarkably like, “Booooooooooze!” and bodyslams the gate so hard it shatters open. He raises his copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and tosses it at the dog, distracting it long enough for him to grab Manny’s ankle and pull him out of there.

“Oh Bernard,” Manny says, when they reach the street and he’s spat most of the grass out of his mouth. “You came back for me! I knew you would!”

Bernard leans over his head, rummaging for a moment before returning, triumphant, a single extremely warped hairpin held between two fingers.

 

**Plan Q**

**03:26 25/12/2017, 15 units remaining**

Manny stumbles up to the front of the shop, limping haphazardly. There’s a rope made from bedsheets hanging from the slightly ajar open window, but it’s torn through along the worn line where Bernard has been sleeping in the same spot for thirty years, leaving it too short to reach from the ground. Manny’s hairpin is sticking out of the lock, snapped clean in two. Fran is leaning heavily on her Toblerone and has a broken spine. Manny examines the book carefully, but concludes that the binding is indeed bent clean in two and likely unsalvageable and will have to be sold as ‘used’ instead of ‘like new’.

“Ah, Manny,” Bernard says, a glint in his eye that suggests whatever plan they’re up to has just fallen into place. “You made it. Just in time.”

Manny glances up at the rope, then down at the lock. The upstairs window’s out, the door is out, which only leaves the large display window left as an access point. But that’s solid glass, which would require a pretty hefty blunt object to smash open. “In time for what?”

“It’s a simple plan, if you think about it.” Bernard cracks his knuckles. “Just use your head.”

 

**Plan S**

**04:03 25/12/2017, 10 units remaining**

It only takes them three tries to find the route to Mrs Greggs. It’s a slightly slower trip than normal, because even with the Toblerone cane, Manny needs a guiding hand, and he keeps heading for one of the other five Mrs Greggs’ houses that he claims he can see on the streets.

“Wait!” Fran says, when they’ve finally made it and Bernard has one hand poised over the bell. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“Avocados,” Manny says. “Pickled onion.”

Bernard frowns. “That doesn’t sound like a time that exists in the world.” He looks around; this may well be the first and only four o’clock in the morning that he will ever see. “I don’t like it. We get the wine, then we get inside.”

“We can’t wake an old lady up at four in the morning!” Fran objects. “She’ll be grumpy and won’t give us anything.”

“Watermelon!”

 

**Plan T**

**05:29 25/12/2017, 6 units remaining**

Manny makes snow angels on the front step. Fran and Bernard trade the Final Bottle back and forth, huddled close for warmth and staring longingly at the lights of the shop next door.

“Should we -” Bernard says around a hiccup. “Go back in?”

Fran attempts to focus on his face and fails. “Back in… where?”

Bernard frowns. “I had a distinct thought, about a place, which had walls…”

“The pub?”

“Moo,” Manny says softly to himself in the snow. “Mooooooo.”

 

**Plan U**

**08:00 25/12/2017, 3 units remaining**

“Good morning, Mrs Greggs, my name is Fran…elope Katzen…smith and I’m with Homes for Homeless collecting donations this Christmas to our local poor and needy. What we’re finding is that the majority of the needy in this local area are really in need of alcohol. Wine if you have it, but really anything that comes in a bottle and is more than 5% proof would be perfectly adequate -”

“Wait, you’re that crazy lady that’s always hanging around at the bookshop.”

“I don’t know what you mean, I’m Framione Katzenjones -”

“You are too, you’ve just put a rotten sheepskin on your head and you’re holding a celebrity autobiography in front of your face like a mask.”

Fran ducks down, twisting so she can see Bernard behind her coat. “She’s onto us.”

“You still owe me six bottles of wine from that time you took a delivery when I popped out to the shops.”

“I told you,” Bernard objected, sticking his head up behind a copy of The Autobiography of Jeremy Clarkson. “They arrived like that. Take it up with your fancy vineyard, oh wait you can’t, they got closed down for poisoning the pope.”

“They certainly did not ship me six empty bottles in a box torn open and resealed with chewing gum!” She grabs a broom from beside the door and swats them both with it. “Get out! Out!”

 

**Plan V**

**08:16 25/12/2017, 2 units remaining**

“God bless you merry gentlemen let nothing - um the hay?

For god and mangers, we three kings duh-duh-duh christmas day

And if you give us lots of wine then we will go away

Give us wine now and we will go away, will go away

Give us wine now and we will - Ow!”

Bernard stumbles back down to the bottom of the steps, blood streaming out of his nose.

“I thought you said you knew a Christmas carol,” Fran says. “I don’t remember that one from Catholic school.”

 

**Plan W**

**08:21 25/12/2017, 1 unit remaining**

“If you keep calling this number, Mr Black, you will be spending Christmas Day in prison, and I can promise you there won’t be any alcohol there either.”

 

**Plan Y**

**08:37 25/12/2017, 0 units remaining**

“We’re doomed,” Fran says, letting herself back into the shop and collapsing down face first on the floor.

Manny heads into the kitchen to fetch water and towels - who would’ve known their elderly neighbour would have such an efficient security system? And wasn’t it strange how every bear trap, broken glass-encrusted window frame and cunningly concealed trip wire had ‘get out Bernard Black’ written on it. “This is all your fault, the both of you. I had five boxes of emergency wine set aside after what happened at Easter.”

There is the customary moment of silence in honour of What Happened at Easter.

“There’s nothing for it,” Bernard says, crawling under the desk looking for empty bottles. “We have fought on the streets, we have fought in the neighbour’s porches, but it is time to admit defeat.” He re-emerges, holding an empty bottle. “Manny! Come here. You’ll have to kill me. It's the only remaining option.”

Manny stumbles in from the kitchen, most of his visible limbs wrapped in toilet roll. “Is that not a tad excessive?”

“At least knock me unconscious. For I cannot continue to live in a world so cruel.”

“Me too,” Fran moans from the floor. “I can feel it coming upon me now. Oh cruel death, oh heartless death -”

  
  


**Plan Z**

**09:00 25/12/2017, 0 units remaining**

“There’s movement on the street,” Manny says. “Someone’s coming, maybe they’ll take pity on us.”

Fran doesn’t look up from her position face down on the floor. “Can’t talk. Too sober.”

“Aha!” Bernard exclaims, carefully using a lighter to evaporate the last drop out of the three wine bottles on his desk and soaking them into a cloth that he then puts into his mouth to suck.

“Is there alcohol on that?” Fran flops a hand in his direction. “Share, Bernard. You have to share.”

“No!” He strokes the cloth, hugging it tight. “It’s mine! My own… my precious…”

“Wait.” Manny’s head jerks up like a hunting dog catching a scent. “That looks like - oh. Oh no.” He sweeps ten bottles off the desk onto the floor, looks around the shop in a state of panic, then seizes an Indian throw and shakes it out over the floor, turning Fran into an indistinct blue-patterned lump.

The door bursts open, revealing a troop of carol singers doing a flawless rendition of the Hallelujah chorus with accompanying trumpets, birds and a spotlight that lands on the spot where they part to reveal two winery boxes full of the promise of wine.

Bernard, with an enthusiasm and energy never before seen in a Black, leaps to his feet and promptly falls over an empty box with a note inside reading ‘IOW 3 bottles of emergency wine love Fran,’ landing flat on his face on the floor. “Wine!” he shouts triumphantly, pointing vaguely towards the doorway. “Precious, life-giving wine. Come to Bernard, just a bit further.”

Behind the wine, Manny’s parents lean into the light with wide smiles over the boxes. “We did call,” Moo-pa says, stepping quickly over the threshold like they’ve learned their lesson since the last time. “To let you know we were coming. Got your voicemail, so we assumed it would all be okay.”

“Now,” Moo-ma says, following him inside and somehow reorganising four stacks of books off the floor without even bending down. “I know you always tell us not to bring anything, but there was this little shop on the drive down.”

“Perfectly clear roads,” Moo-pa adds. “I don’t know where all the traffic could have got to. We’ve had the snow chains on since September, of course. That little cold snap.”

Bernard stumbles back to his feet to walk up to him and take the box from his arms. “Nice to see you, merry Christmas, thank you for coming, bye,” he says, circling around the table and back to the desk with his prize.

Instantly behind him, Fran follows, taking the second box, Indian throw still caught around her ankles. “Nice to see you, merry Christmas, thank you for coming.”

“Manny!” Bernard shouts.

Manny leans forward over his shoulder. “I’m right behind you, Bernard.”

“Manny!” Bernard shouts again. “Your parents are here. You have to make them go away!”

Manny steps out from behind the desk. “Moo-ma, Moo-pa, thank you for coming. And for the - generous gifts.” He glances back to where Bernard is gnawing the cardboard box open to reach the wine within. “But I am afraid we aren’t exactly equipped for visitors this year.”

“We’re ill,” Fran says from the floor where she’s hacking at the cork in her wine bottle with a badger claw.

“Deathly,” Bernard adds.

“Very contagious.”

“Plague.”

“And anyway,” Manny adds triumphantly, “we haven’t got any food in, and the pub is closed so you’ll just have to go back home and -”

“Oh that’s not a bother, dear,” Moo-ma says. Somehow she’s come another metre into the shop, and behind her, the displays are sparkling clean and organised. Moo-pa is sitting on a leather armchair smoking a pipe and humming to himself, giving no indication of where any of it came from. “There’s a little shop just around the corner where we can pick some food up. Moo-pa and I just bought the wine there five minutes ago, Christmas day be darned.” She smiles warmly around at them all. “God bless the British, isn’t that right? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  
  


 


End file.
